Premarital Abortion, What Is the Harm? The Responsibilisation of Women’s Pregnancy Among China’s ‘Privileged’ Daughters

Abstract

In this chapter, I highlight issues around premarital sex, a prevalent practice under the reform among young people, to uncover how it creates new dilemmas for young women of this age as they negotiate between moralism and realism in terms of their premarital sexual conduct. I focus on their narratives about the stigma attached to premarital abortion and women’s interpretations of ‘responsible motherhood’ in order to reveal the specific Chinese characteristics of their rationalisation of reproductive choice.